Our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality (i.e. our "metaphysical" assumptions) have a decisive effect upon our perceptions and interpretations - such that when our metaphysics rules-out something, then that thing is often unperceived - or, if perceived, then regarded as impossible.
This is, I presume, why the marriage of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene (who is the same person as Mary of Bethany) is either unnoticed by readers of the IV Gospel (called "John"), and/or why each mention of it is interpreted-away - despite that there is ample and coherent reference to the marriage and its profound spiritual significance in that Gospel.
The reason is not far to seek; because most Christians have the fundamental assumption that Jesus cannot be married, because Jesus is mystically conceptualized (in an Athanasian-Trinitarian fashion) as one of the three persons of the One Godhead. And, as such, a cosmically-significant marriage of Jesus to a human being is so impossible as to be absurd.
Consequently, each and every mention of the marriage of Jesus and Mary must mean something else; and the only task is to suggest what these references might mean. Since humans are natural experts at explaining-away whatever they regard as impossible, this is an almost automatic process.
The same applies to reading the IV Gospel itself. As I described at the beginning of Lazarus Writes; when mainstream, orthodox, traditional Christians read this Gospel; they do so by implicitly-but-decisively subordinating it to the numerical majority "consensus" of the rest of the New Testament. First to the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Gospels I, II, III; but especially Matthew and Luke), and/or the Epistles (especially Pauline), and to some parts of the Revelation/ Apocalypse.
(Almost as if spiritual authority was determined by majority vote!)
My understanding - that the IV Gospel is the only eye-witness, earliest, and qualitatively most authoritative source concerning Jesus - is regarded as idiosyncratic, and indeed arbitrary.
Therefore; the New Testament, and whole Bible, are being read in terms of fundamental assumptions concerning the weight and validity of its components, and how this question ought to be determined; that washes-away anything stated in the IV Gospel, or omitted from it, that is regarded as significant but contradictory to the majority of Books (or to other sources such as Matthew, Luke and Paul; that are treated as de facto more authoritative).
By assumption, therefore, the IV Gospel must be explained in terms that harmonize it with other parts of the Bible; those parts that have, through history and as maintained by the churches, been accorded an assumed primacy.
Another assumption relates to how we personally (each of us) ought to read The Bible - including the IV Gospel.
It is assumed that we ought to defer to and obey some external authority in allowed ways of reading or understanding the Bible.
Which particular authority we ought to defer to is a matter of contention between Christian denominations and churches (e.g. church tradition, or current authoritative church teaching as a whole or of specific persons, or some version of theology, or current linguistic and historical scholarship...).
Among among those Christians who state that the Bible is primary, and its own authority, and ought to be understood as inerrant and literally true; there are always prior assumptions as to whether this means the Bible as a whole is true, or else the New Testament primarily, or particular parts of the New Testament.
And the "correct" way of understanding the Bible is likewise a prior assumption. Should its ultimate meaning be understood in an overall sense of mutual cohesion - including all Boks in both Old and New Testaments? Or understood one Book at a time?
Or does truth reside in the Bible verse by verse - or even word by word?
And/or do those words ascribed to Jesus (spoken by him, as recorded), have the highest authority?
Even those denominations that assert we ought to read the Bible for ourselves by personal revelation, invariably insist upon some particular interpretations; at least for key doctrines, and for church members we aspire to have good standing in the institution.
My point here is that our understanding of what is significant and what it means, is structured by assumptions that we all have before we embark on Christian exegesis; and before we read The Bible - or indeed seek guidance from any external source.
This is just a fact of things: our fundamental metaphysical assumptions have structured our Christian faith, determine what counts as evidence, and shape what that evidence means.
We cannot choose not to have fundamental assumptions.
Therefore your choice and my choice as Christians; lies in whether we acknowledge and become aware of the fact of prior assumptions; or - as is more usual - to deny and refuse to discuss the fact.
NOTE ADDED: A further example of a prior-to-Christianity and fundamental structuring assumption is the nature of God-the-creator. Most theologically-minded Christians insist that God is and must be an Omni-God that created ex nihilo. Such a person's entire Christianity is built within such assumptions; such that (for example) "God is Love" is conceptualized within the metaphysical assumption that the loving God must be the Omni-/ ex nihilo-God; such that whatever Love means to them (their conceptualization of the nature of Love) is subordinated to the imperatives of the Omni-/ ex nihilo-God. Yet, such persons usually refuse to admit that their metaphysical assumptions regarding God Just Are prior-to, and therefore not derived-from, Christianity.
An excellent summary of most of this blog! I am getting awfully tired of hearing “We just teach what the Bible says,” as though words can ever say anything on their own.
ReplyDeleteThat these types of choices in textual interpretation are unavoidable should be obvious given flat-out contradictions in the gospels (did God say “This is my beloved son” or “You are my beloved son?”). But wait! Where in the Bible is the Law of Noncontradiction articulated? Another assumption! It’s assumptions all the way down…
So we can infer that God selected an authority to assist us or we can infer God will personally tell us (but then it’s hard to see how that produces anything as organized as Paul lays out). I’m partial to the former *but* that choice isn’t compelled not just bc of the historical/current reality of myriad denominations but for the same reasons why someone had to interpret Scripture in the first place. *Everything* in reality has to be interpreted to have meaning for humans, and fundamentally who can do that but the individual- first/initially and ongoing?
This is why I ultimately have a hard time giving Scripture the kind of primacy many Christians claim to, because it’s built-into mortal life that the personal is most meaningful and a book can never be as personal as our direct interactions with reality.
You mention “love” which is a good example. “Justice” was where it first stood out to me as the conservative evangelicals clearly used a modern definition of justice without being aware of it or acknowledging that they brought that in from outside of Scripture. Now at a conservative Lutheran church, they claim to derive “God’s justice” solely from Scripture, and it’s not anything you would recognize as justice at all! If the words get as mis-mapped as that, you may as well claim that “never” means “every other Tuesday” and “beloved” means “one I pour maple syrup on.” I just don’t see how the Bible can be useful qua book without the interpreting authority. I see the usefulness (but more often the abuses) of using it on your own, but I wouldn’t call that “qua book” uses. More like a sort of channeling tool.
@Mia - Good points.
ReplyDeleteI am particularly repelled by the Protestant evangelical idea of justice, which may be what you are referencing - and the Mormons have adopted what seems like a version of this.
(Note, the church I most often attend, and with which my family have been connected for a couple of decades, is exactly this kind - and so are several good friends.)
The basic idea is an example of double-negative theology - that Jesus came to save us from sin, (approximately) on the basis that otherwise it would be justice for God to punish every human being with Hell. Because justice must be served on somebody, God inflicted the punishment for all Men on Jesus (in Mormonism the suffering due to all Men forever was inflicted on Jesus in Gethsemane, mostly - which, incidentally, contradicts the fundamental assumptions of Mormon metaphysics) - thereby allowing God to remit our due punishment, and clearing the way to allow us into Heaven.
I am aware of the assumptions and inferences that lead to this very strange idea of justice - but the assumptions seem to me both absurd, and also somehow desperate!
In a nutshell; theologians painted themselves into a corner by their pre-Christian assumptions - mainly those concerning the nature of reality, and of God - and sought (desperately) for a way to make Jesus necessary - and came up with this one.
But from a plain Man's perspective, all this paints God in a very bad light. For a start, why did Omni-God set up creation and make all Men in this way? If Adam and Eve are to blame for everybody afterwards, is that Justice - and anyway, God made Adam and Eve the way they were, and introduced the serpent into the Garden?
If charges of either God's sadism are to be avoided, then the Goodness of God becomes more a matter of definition than of anything any decent human could endorse. In sum - such a God is almost identical with Islam (Good is God, which is incomprehensible to humans, therefore obedience to God's revealed will is the core virtue), than Jesus's God as mostly described in the Gospels and Epistles (where God is Good, and we can know this Goodness because we are "sons" of God).
Luckily, evangelical Protestants do not usually live-down to their theology! But their explanation of the need, nature, and process of salvation is a severe obstacle to coherence and common sense!
Yes, penal substitutionary atonement is what you’re describing and it’s just evil. RCC agrees it’s evil but then all they have as an alternative is that atonement is “a mystery.” I’m ok with this but understand why many aren’t. I hadn’t noticed the connection to the definition of the good, but that’s exactly right! The Lutherans literally define “good” for a human being as “something we do that is motivated by obedience to God” and evil as “anything done for a reason other than obedience to God.” So like…loving your child naturally/spontaneously is evil. It’s bonkers. I asked well doesn’t that mean goodness itself is subjective and just defined as “whatever God commands or does”, to which they just deflect and say well that’s philosophy, I’m just following the Bible. So again I keep coming back to: life is a trick, anything you think you know is a random shot in the dark and don’t look too hard at what that says about God that he would make things this way.
ReplyDeleteOfc they don’t live down to any of that- if they did, they would get nowhere at all!